North Korea's Provocation

As the condemnation of the 9/11 attacks quickly spread worldwide in 2001, so has the denunciation of North Korea's announcement Monday that it had conducted an underground nuclear test.

The 9/11 harmony broke down in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ousting the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan was justifiable. Toppling the secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, which had no links to al-Qaida, was deemed by most governments to be a huge mistake.

Let history be a lesson as we prepare to deal with North Korea's Kim Jong II, a far less predictable and more menacing tyrant than Mr. Hussein was. The military option should be ruled out because (1) North Korea doesn't pose an existential threat to America and (2) the United States remains heavily involved in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Washington simply does not have the resources to topple yet another government thousands of miles away, one that has more than a million soldiers in its army and possibly a nuclear bomb. That much is acknowledged even by key neoconservatives, who were once proponents of preemptive action.

Two responses to North Korea's provocative act make the most sense: Direct negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang and harsher U.N. sanctions.

The Bush administration refuses direct talks, contrary to the advice of such prominent foreign policy strategists as former Secretaries of State Jim Baker and Colin Powell and former Sen. Sam Nunn. That leaves the U.N. option, which is likely to result in isolating North Korea further.

Toughening sanctions may not force the North Koreans to stop their development of weapons of mass destruction, but it will make that development harder.

The regime in Pyongyang will eventually implode for the same reasons the Soviet Union did: a shattered economy and a dysfunctional bureaucracy that fails to meet the basic needs of the people. In the meantime, the United Nations should draw an indelibly red mark beyond which the military option could become rekindled.

North Korea becomes an existential threat if it exports nuclear technology or attempts to sell atomic devices to third parties. The U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution should include an unmistakable warning to North Korea of military consequences if it crosses the red line.